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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25652992">Starblind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ukenceto/pseuds/ukenceto'>ukenceto</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Love beyond the bones [24]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gears of War (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Art, Deities, Gen, One Shot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:08:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,292</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25652992</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ukenceto/pseuds/ukenceto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Sera, or of how gods are neither born nor ever fully die. </p><p>+artworks</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Love beyond the bones [24]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1025247</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Starblind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>An idea that more or less has been surfacing to my mind for years now; I decided to include the art which I had made for it as well.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>***</p><p>One could say there was a lot of the old world that ended up sacrificed to the gods of hydroelectric power.</p><p> </p><p>Whole areas, towns with their copper domed buildings sank in a watery grave, only ever showing during years of extreme drought; and even then, in no more than a glimpse, a peak above the waterline that might be spotted in passing.</p><p> </p><p>But rarely anybody went there to see them rise.</p><p> </p><p>As the tales went, it was better to leave the ghosts asleep.</p><p> </p><p>Sometimes, a plane would fly overhead – lost, or damaged, spewing smoke and desperation into the night sky, before disappearing into the dense forests all around.</p><p> </p><p>A war was waged.</p><p> </p><p>A war had always been waged, more or less, for as long as that land was a land people walked upon, they had been killing each other, fighting for long forgotten kings in the name of nonexistent nations.</p><p> </p><p>There were times, when peace had bloomed across the land, but lasted no more than several human lifetimes. A thing that could be but a blink of an eye for the forest, the quarry underneath, the waters which had come forth from the depths the same way they had for a millennia.</p><p> </p><p>Man could change their path, shift the river banks, built dams and fortifications, harvest the fast, ice-cold streams, create a new form of power and then forget it all to fall into ruin, chasing a different goal, a new dream.</p><p> </p><p>But one thing had remained throughout, a silent witness to the decay of time, of remembrance.</p><p> </p><p>War. It dwelled always in the hearts of men, a step away from darkness, a short life made even shorter; blood spilled in the dead of night.</p><p> </p><p>Sticks and stones, and guns and bones and fire pouring down the skies, stronger even than the sun.</p><p> </p><p>In so many different ways, war was wrought.</p><p> </p><p>One day, though it was the span of many other days that had made it happen, a new weapon was brought forth, in the chase of an army that could finally crush one’s fellow man.</p><p> </p><p>And the land saw more bloodshed than it ever had before.</p><p> </p><p>All the power man had fought for, laid forgotten, just like the cities on the bottom of the lakes; the still cogs of the powerplants at the dams, the empty windmills, the barren fields.</p><p> </p><p>If people had grown to have faith in their machines, in their weapons and the walls of their cities, what became of that once those things inevitably crumbled?</p><p> </p><p>What was left in one’s mind on the battlefield, on the desperate last stand, on a sinking ship, amidst a scorching desert?</p><p> </p><p>The same which had always dwelled through countless battles, through pain and suffering, defeat and the razor-teeth filled maw of Victory.</p><p> </p><p>War.</p><p> </p><p>It was not the reason, as that was always a pretense, an ephemeral excuse, but everything else left in its wake. A knife wound, blood pouring through clenched fingers, through muttered prayers sent without aim nor shape.</p><p> </p><p>A desperate cry, a new life stolen from the cradle, a pair of eyes as blue as the sky staring into nothingness.</p><p> </p><p>War was not just the scorched battlefields; it was the few survivors trying to make it through Frost, the madness which lingered like a spark next to a barrel of gasoline, the nightmares that haunted the living and the empty graves never dug for the dead.</p><p> </p><p>And if there was faith… even if it went unnamed, even if it never had a temple nor a priest, for that all the world was a shrine; would it one day, have a shape?</p><p> </p><p>Would it find a form, was there one it doesn’t already reside in, a catalyst, a purpose?</p><p> </p><p>Everything in the universe seems to point that way, even the smallest fraction of known space adhering to function, to reason.</p><p> </p><p>And if all them unheard voices called for it, what kind of being could rise from so much pain?</p><p> </p><p>Maybe it started gradually.</p><p> </p><p>A dream. A sense of loss.</p><p> </p><p>A life spent fighting, mourning, loving. When is a death not a death, but a rebirth?</p><p> </p><p>And if there was a man…</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>He must’ve woken on the battlefield a thousand times, or ten thousand, or even more. He didn’t remember them all. They were there, a disjointed series of images playing behind his eyelids, glimpses of fire and smoke, of blood and grass, of mud and agony.</p><p> </p><p>The pain has always been there, coming and going. But the body made it through regardless.</p><p> </p><p>Spears, bullets, swords.</p><p> </p><p>The cycle eventually repeated.</p><p> </p><p>Each lifetime he loved, despite the terror, despite the loss. And each one he lost, inevitably, so that he can find again, a hundred years from now. From then.</p><p> </p><p>The names changed, but not the faces.</p><p> </p><p>He sometimes aged, a rare blessing to the lives in which he grew to know peace, to see his children fill out his boots, to know how nature gave back what his hands had ploughed, to see the sun rise and set in silence.</p><p> </p><p>But inevitably, it would end, and begin again. He would remember, he would dream, he would find the lives he valued more than his own slip between his fingers, no matter the blood he spilled to prevent it.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>One day, he wakes, and there’s darkness.</p><p> </p><p>Not the darkness of new moons and starless sky, neither that of a tomb; as he had woken in both plenty of times to know it.</p><p> </p><p>There is pain, his body suspended in agony, like spears in his flesh.</p><p> </p><p>And there’s water; the taste of it all around him, the cold seeping through despite the numbness it entailed, the weight of it above him palpable even in the dark.</p><p> </p><p>He feels trapped, caught in a state between life but not quite death, one even whatever strength resided within him could not shake.</p><p> </p><p>Time passes, and even with the dreams echoing in his mind, he can make out the vibrations coming through in the water. Steady, unchanging. Like a giant’s heartbeat, slow and monstrous.</p><p> </p><p>More time passes, but he has no concept of how much, no way to know.</p><p> </p><p>It feels like forever, even for him, who had known millennia.</p><p> </p><p>But one day, it would end. Like everything else.</p><p> </p><p>The metal around him would rust, and his prison would rot away, forgotten.</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>He knows whoever put him there is long gone, when the giant’s heartbeat stutters.</p><p> </p><p>Eventually, it comes to a halt; and then there is quiet.</p><p> </p><p>He waits. There’s nothing more he could do.</p><p> </p><p>And he dreams.</p><p> </p><p>This time, the dreams bring bittersweet agony, they bring the memory of love. Of those he had found, or had found him, each time.</p><p> </p><p>There is a change. A sense of motion, a loss of equilibrium.</p><p> </p><p>He tastes rust.</p><p> </p><p>He opens his eyes, and sees war again.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>But something is different now. The people around him, they need his strength, and there is purpose.</p><p> </p><p>The time he’s lost, had given in turn.</p><p> </p><p>He takes their anguish, and their pain, and their hope.</p><p> </p><p>And he does what he’d always done best. He fights. He kills. Many moons pass above him, by the time he’s finally done.</p><p> </p><p>But this time, the army that had been brought forth so long ago is finally gone.</p><p> </p><p>He knows it will repeat, one day.</p><p> </p><p>Everything always does.</p><p> </p><p>Now? Now he can rest. He can love, again.</p><p> </p><p>And be loved.</p><p> </p><p>The strength drains from his veins, it sinks into the ground as each year of peace comes by, until he’s all that he’s got left.</p><p> </p><p>He’s only a man, and the battlefield is a distant dream. A half-forgotten memory.</p><p> </p><p>Somebody calls his name, and all which he can hears in that sound, is love, not war.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Marcus.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>***</em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>my twitter and pixiv, where you can find more of my art: </p><p>https://twitter.com/singularity0101</p><p>https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/7572092</p></blockquote></div></div>
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